True Blue Read online

  True Blue

  Amy Knupp

  Contents

  About the Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Amy Knupp

  About the Author

  About the Book

  She was jilted on her wedding day. He’s the best friend waiting in the wings.

  * * *

  Lexie Gallagher is starting to think she’s better off alone. Her family fell apart years ago. Her relationships all end in disaster. Is she the common denominator who causes everyone to leave? Everyone but her best friend, Gabe, who whisks her away from the scene of the latest breakup.

  * * *

  As the Human Resources VP for North Brothers Sports, Gabe North understands people and how to meet their needs. What Lexie’s always needed is a true-blue friend, doubly so when she’s left at the altar. Of course he’ll be her shoulder to cry on—even though he’s wanted to be more than friends for years.

  * * *

  As Lexie heals from her recent rejection, Gabe is everything she needs…and then he becomes even more. But when life gets tricky, will Lexie find herself eternally alone or can she finally believe that true blue is forever?

  Chapter One

  It would be a crying shame if Lexie Gallagher threw up on her pretty white wedding dress.

  Then again, the dress hardly mattered now.

  She was sure her jaw actually gaped as she watched her fiancé—former fiancé—all slim and clean-cut in his charcoal tux, walk away after calling off the ceremony, then turn the corner and disappear from her sight. Her chest felt heavy and tight as the situation sank in.

  Now what?

  She was standing in a nondescript hallway in the basement of a church she’d been in exactly three times in her life, with close to a hundred and fifty people due to show up in twenty-ish minutes. Alone, stunned, and nauseated as all get out.

  She found the wall with her back, leaned into it, suddenly needing its support as her mind went from numb to whirling like a tornado in a matter of seconds.

  “Lex?”

  The deep, so-familiar male voice resonated through her as Gabe North, her best friend, strode around the corner from the direction Raleigh had gone.

  “What did he say?” Gabe said in a low, controlled voice as he hurried toward her. With some measure of relief, she drank in the sight of him, every golden-brown hair uncharacteristically in place, his tuxedo fitting him impeccably.

  Lexie reached out and wrapped her fingers around his forearm, maybe subconsciously hoping to prevent him from going after Raleigh when she filled him in.

  “We’re not…” She cleared her throat to get her voice to work. “The wedding’s off,” she croaked out.

  Gabe swore as his blue eyes, filled with compassion and concern, held hers. He pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her as she came away from the wall and inhaled his comforting scent, let herself wilt a little into his strength.

  “I’m sorry, Lexie,” he said into her hair. “What the hell?”

  She blew a shaky breath into his lapel, where, she realized, she was crushing his boutonnière, the single bloom that signified his role as her honor attendant. Man maid, his brothers had teasingly called him.

  Instead of answering his question, she said, “Good thing you don’t need your flower. I killed it.”

  “I’d like to kill that son of a—”

  “Gabe.” She shook her head adamantly, unable to handle thinking too hard about Raleigh at this moment. She angled her chin to look up at him, one persistent thought jabbing at her with spikes of anxiety. “What do I do about all the people?” She could hear a note of hysteria in her own voice.

  He considered that as her own brain ground to a halt.

  “He’s the one who called it off?”

  She lowered her gaze and nodded.

  “Then you don’t do anything,” Gabe said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “He caused the problem. He can deal with it. I’ll let Sierra and Mackenzie know what’s going on, and they can talk to anyone you need them to.”

  He had a point. This was Raleigh’s doing. Raleigh’s church. Raleigh’s family, since she didn’t have one. The Norths were her surrogate family and Gabe would tell them. The vast majority of guests were on Raleigh’s side, with the exception of a small group from her department, the entire North clan, and a few others.

  A wave of light-headedness came over her, and she grasped Gabe’s upper arms for balance, grateful he was here for her, like he had been since the first day of kindergarten. “Okay, so…what now?”

  He looked both ways, spotted the exit sign at the far end of the hall, took her hand, and pulled her along. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  She opened her mouth to argue and then closed it.

  Escape.

  Yes.

  “Please,” she said, hurrying in her stupid white satin shoes alongside him as he took giant strides toward what appeared to be a back door. “Could you ask Sierra to get my stuff?”

  “I’ll text her and I’m sure she’ll take care of everything.”

  When they got to the heavy exterior door, he opened it, keeping her behind him. “You might be tiny, but you’re hard to hide in the white. Stay here until I come back. I’ll get the car.”

  “Hurry.” She was still mostly holding off coherent thoughts, but the need to get the heck out of Dodge before anyone asked her, face-to-face, what was going on pressed in on her as if the hallway was shrinking.

  Once the door closed, her forgotten lower-level corner of the church was silent, insulated from above, where she couldn’t help but wonder what was happening. Was Raleigh telling the groomsmen? Or had they known before she did? Had he broken it to his parents? What would he tell everyone?

  Not the truth—or what Raleigh saw as the truth.

  No one but her and him needed to know what had made Raleigh call their wedding off less than an hour before she was to walk down the aisle.

  It wasn’t true anyway, but as her friend and bridesmaid Kara liked to say, perception was ninety percent of a person’s reality, and Lexie hadn’t been able to convince Raleigh his was faulty.

  Another wave of nausea washed over her and she shoved aside the thoughts. Maybe later she would be able to pick apart the five-minute conversation with her no-longer groom. She squeezed her eyes shut against everything, trying to get through the next few minutes until Gabe got her out of here.

  His light knock finally came, and she pushed the heavy door open, squinting against the sudden onslaught of early-afternoon June sunlight.

  Weather-wise, it had spruced up to be a perfect Nashville day—low eighties, scattered clouds, slight breeze. She’d worried for weeks whether Mother Nature would pull through for their outdoor reception. Obviously she’d been worried about the wrong thing.

  Gabe’s white Tesla Model S was right there, pulled up on the double-wide walkway that went from the parking lot to the door, and was shielded by part of the building that jutted out. She glanced around like a criminal afraid of getting caught and exhaled when she realized no one could see her. He walked her to the passenger side, opened the door, helped her get her dress tucked in before closing her in. The simple trainless gown she’d chosen was a plus in clandestine getaways, she thought with another surge of hysteria bubbling up inside.

  As Gabe eased into the driver’s seat, he was tapping out a text message to someone. “Sierra’s going to bring your bag to the main door—”

  “I can’t go to the main door!” she said in a panic.

  “I’m going,” he said with a hand on her bare forearm. “I’ll get the AC cranked up and leave you here in the car. While I’m gone”—he eyed her hair, which was done up to masterpiece proportions and had a delicate floral headpiece with a short veil in back—“as beautiful as your hair looks, do you think you can get the veil off so you’re less conspicuous?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Gabe…” She put her other hand over his, still on her arm, stopping him. He looked down at her with his brows raised. “Thank you.” Emotion crawled up her throat, and she couldn’t say more, could not even begin to pick apart the hornets’ nest of emotions.

  “No need to thank me. Let’s get you out of here.”

  She nodded as he started the car, realizing, as the cool air blew over her, how stinking hot a wedding dress was, even one that bared two-thirds of her back and had lacy cap sleeves.

  As soon as he shut her in and jogged off toward the front side of the building, she flipped the visor down and tried to see how to dismantle her hair. The headpiece wasn’t complex, was secured with a built-in comb, but there were pins galore and half a gallon of hairspray holding it and the partial updo in place.

  Thankful for something concrete to focus on, she opened the glove compartment and went to work plucking out the bobby pins one by one and tossing them in. By the time Gabe returned, she had her hair clear of everything but hairsp
ray and held the handmade headpiece, staring at the beautiful wisteria flowers in the lightest blush color, entwined with tiny silver leaves and crystals. What a waste of an exquisite piece.

  Gabe handed her the small bag with her hair and makeup touch-up tools, her phone, her wallet, and her white reception sneakers. “Sierra and Mackenzie send their love and said to text them soon. They wanted to come back with me and hug you, but I told them we have to go. The sooner the better.”

  Those two… If she didn’t have Gabe, Sierra and Mackenzie were the people she would’ve turned to. She’d only gotten to know them in the past few months, after she’d asked her college roommate, Kara, and Raleigh’s sister, Lauryn, to be her bridesmaids. Sierra was engaged to Cole, Gabe’s middle brother, and Mackenzie was the fiancée of Drake, Gabe’s youngest brother. Lexie had met them at the North family’s weekly Sunday dinners. Once Lexie had gotten close to them, she’d asked them to be her personal assistants for the wedding. While she and Kara had been close in college and she and Lauryn got along well enough, the bonds with Sierra and Mackenzie were stronger. They’d become almost soul-sister tight in a short time. For a girl who’d never had a slew of close friends, it was new and different and awesome.

  “So here’s the plan,” Gabe said, his voice calm, reassuring. “Most of the cars are coming in the main entrance to the lot. I’m going to take you out the back route. I want you to put your seat back all the way and lie down so, on the off chance we pass someone on their way in, you won’t be seen.”

  Lexie did what he said with no argument, relieved to avoid people she might know. She’d worry about facing the world later. “Where are you taking me?” she asked from a nearly horizontal position as Gabe reversed down the long walkway and then whipped the car around and took off.

  “Haven’t gotten that far yet. Where do you want to go?”

  Returning to her downtown apartment, where she’d thought she’d spent her last night ever, was unthinkable. She’d left it with so much excitement and hope and joy this morning, and to walk back in now, still single, devastated, feeling like a failure… She couldn’t handle that. Besides, Raleigh lived in the same building, six floors up, and he was the last person she wanted to run into.

  “Not to my apartment. Not to Europe.” She wasn’t one of those girls who’d be taking her planned honeymoon trip alone.

  “I’m on it.” When the car was stopped at a traffic light, he punched in a message to someone on his phone, then set it back on the console.

  “Is it safe to sit up now?” she asked. Without being able to see where they were going, all she had to focus on were her thoughts, and those were a combo plate of confusion and ugliness.

  “Go ahead.”

  Lexie raised her seat, then busied herself kicking off the uncomfortable pumps and searching through her bag for her no-show socks and sneakers. When she pulled out the shoes, she smiled and then frowned at the sparkly silver laces Kara had put in, insisting that even though they were practical shoes, they needed bling for her wedding day.

  Well, looked like she was going to have bling for her non-wedding day.

  To distract herself, she flipped the radio on and searched the satellite streaming service for eighties music. Gabe wasn’t a fan, she knew, but she also knew he would indulge her right now. She needed some comfort music, upbeat music, and the second a love song came on, she would punch in something different. Like maybe the heaviest heavy metal.

  As Tears for Fears filled the car, Lexie finally took stock of their whereabouts. “You’re taking me to your place?”

  “I figured you could change your clothes there.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’m still working on it. Trust me?”

  “Of course.”

  She closed her eyes, rested her head back, and focused on the music, only the music, singing every lyric in her mind as Duran Duran and then Bruce Springsteen played. When Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” started up, she went to jab the control, unable to embrace that lyric, and when she realized Gabe had turned down his street, she clicked the sound system off altogether.

  Stupid eighties music.

  Gabe pulled into the garage of his sprawling traditional-style home. He turned off the car and pushed the button to close the door behind them, ensuring none of the neighbors would spot Lexie in her wedding dress. Typical thoughtful Gabe, and she loved him for it.

  “Let me go in and let Saint out first so he doesn’t shed or worse on your dress. Your suitcase is in the trunk, or I’m pretty sure you have some clothes in the spare bedroom.”

  “I’ll see what I left in the house.” She knew there were several options, as she sometimes used his pool and left extra swimsuits and clothes there for convenience.

  “I’ll open the door as soon as Saint’s out of the way.”

  “Hurry,” she said as he shut the driver’s door, leaving her alone in the cool, quiet three-car garage.

  With only the faint light from the garage door opener above, her eyes needed time to adjust again. She closed them, breathed deeply for maybe the first time since Raleigh had left her standing in the church basement, and she couldn’t help noticing the shakiness of the breath.

  Left at the altar—or close enough.

  What a flipping cliché. A humiliating, heartbreaking cliché.

  Raleigh was good-looking, successful, two years younger than her thirty-seven, and on his way up the ladder at the large firm where they were both employed, he as an architect and she as a landscape architect. Nearly two years ago, they’d worked on a large shopping center project together, and he’d started pursuing her. Though she’d been reluctant to date someone from work, he’d swept her away with his attention and his determination and his enthusiasm.

  Now here they were. Their relationship hadn’t been perfect, but whose was? She’d never thought in a million years he would break up on their wedding day.

  When the light from the opener clicked off, total darkness descended, and she quickly popped the car door open, which lit up the interior. With a sad sigh, she pivoted on the seat to swing her legs out, struggling because of the formfitting cut of the dress.

  The dress that no longer mattered, she remembered, taking less care as she stood.

  If she ripped it, so what?

  If Saint, Gabe’s oversized, overzealous St. Bernard mix, got mud or hair on it, who cared?

  There might be a market for used wedding dresses, but who would ever want one from a failed wedding? She wouldn’t feel right even giving it away for fear it would curse someone.

  She grabbed her bag from the floor of the car, dug out her phone, ignored the gazillions of message notifications, and turned on the flashlight to make her way to the door. As she entered the open kitchen and living area, Gabe was coming inside from the French doors in the back of the house. She caught a glimpse out the window of Saint nosing around the expansive backyard.

  “Hey,” he said in a gentle tone as he strode over to her. His gaze was assessing, questioning. “You holding up?”

  The emotions that she’d held off so far were coming in waves now, and she longed for the numbness of fifteen minutes ago. She merely nodded, battling internally against the storm. “What are our plans?”

  “I’ve got Jalisa working on the details,” he said of his executive assistant, “but I’m taking you away. Dress for a flight. Not Europe.” He said the last bit with a hint of a grin.

  When she didn’t even attempt a smile, he sobered and trailed his palm from her upper arm down to her hand, which he held on to. She relished the heat of it, the safety, the caring, and didn’t pull away. Just exhaled a slow, semi-controlled breath.

  “I don’t understand what happened, Lex. Did you guys fight or something?”